Camp Tecumseh, a summer sleepaway camp run by the Salvation Army opened at full capacity for the first time in two years.

At the start of the summer sessions in 2021, Martin Washington noticed one of his new campers wasn’t feeling great.

The camper came from a background of neglect, and was very closed off to the camp experience.

Hiding behind a dark, baggy hoodie and long sweatpants in the blazing heat and shying away from camp activities, the young camper struck a chord with Washington.

Washington, 21, is a village leader at Camp Tecumseh, responsible for overseeing a group of cabins. He, too, struggled with camp when he first came here when he was just 7 years old. Washington said he used to be homesick and had trouble adjusting when he was a new camper, so he empathized with this young person and set out his goal for the summer: to help him fall in love with camp.

“By the end of the summer, he was always wearing shorts and a T-shirt,” Washington said. “He didn’t swim before. By the third week he had a blue band, which is our highest swimming band, and he was going off the diving board.”

At one point, Washington and the camper sang a song from “Moana” together on stage.

“That was the moment I was like, ‘wow, this is a completely different kid’.”

Bonds like this one are common at the Salvation Army’s Camp Tecumseh, located in Hunterdon County. Many campers, Washington explained, come from difficult home lives and wouldn’t be able to experience a sleep away camp without the Salvation Army.

Camp Tecumseh is subsidized by donations given to the Salvation Army throughout the year, Camp Director John Copeland explained.

Almost every state or group of states in the country has a Salvation Army-run summer camp, he said.

“The Salvation Army, a lot of people don’t know, is one of the largest camping organizations in America,” Copeland said. The Christian organization’s camp motto is “Have fun, be safe, encounter God.”

While the camp has a religious affiliation, Copeland said that the first two parts are the main focus. “We trust that God’s gonna take care of the encountering part, if you come out to this (camp).”

Parents can register their kids for camp online, and Camp Tecumseh works to connect each of the children who attend camp with their local Salvation Army, church, community center or service unit to aid with the process, which can mean providing help with transportation to and from camp.

Anyone who wants to attend camp is able to, Copeland said. Scholarships are provided through local Salvation Army sites to campers, which helps many families be able to afford sending their children to camp. “People pay what they really can afford,” he said.

When COVID hit, the camp was unable to open in 2020 and only in a limited capacity in 2021 for the campers who typically spend their summers there. The children that typically attend the camp didn’t have other options for those missed summers, which hit him hard, Copeland explained.

Many campers look forward to the security surrounding the three meals a day provided at camp. It was heartbreaking, he said, to know that they couldn’t provide for their campers in the way that they wanted to for the past two years.

While he couldn’t provide camp programming, in 2020, Copeland was able to open the camp as a respite site for emergency and COVID disaster workers and their families who were working with the Salvation Army.

In 2021, he was able to open the camp at limited capacity with frequent testing and designated cohorts to provide social distancing bubbles.

“For the few kids who did get to experience camp last year, they were so ready to be outside and have any sort of social interaction. Clearly missing out on over a year and a half of honing their skills and flexing those muscles, socially and relationally, it was really great to see them thrive — even in a very weird environment, and what was for us a very weird summer,” Copeland said.

This year, Copeland was able to open camp at full capacity with no restrictions, welcoming back staff and campers for all summer sessions.

Each session is a week long, giving kids the opportunity to come to sessions that suit their individual interests, or to try out different types of activities.

There’s a STEM camp, which is called “Convention,” a music and arts camp, a teen camp color war called “Fear Factor,” olympic week, and a circus-themed sports and fitness camp called “Under the Big Top.”

Additionally, there are two music and art conservatories that are running at the same time as the different sessions. Besides the designated sessions for younger kids and teens, Camp Tecumseh works to accommodate kids from age seven to 16 at each session — tailoring programming to the needs and ages of all attending campers.

Although the camp is set to house 220 campers per week and over 100 staff, the residual effect of the pandemic is impacting this year’s attendance.

Copeland is hoping the first session will be their smallest session of the summer, and that camp attendance will gain traction as the weeks pass. Some parents are still hesitant to send their kids to camp due to COVID concerns, so he tempered his expectations for this year’s attendance accordingly.

“We’re giving ourselves some grace there, but we still want to get as many kids here as possible.”

Fortunately, Copeland said, some of their later sessions are already full or taking on waitlists.

Despite having an increase in attendance expected for later sessions, Camp Tecumseh is always looking to improve donations to keep camp up and running.

“Funding is always difficult for a nonprofit camp. There’s so many viable options for where people can make donations, especially coming after COVID. It’s just a lot of competition for where those dollars go,” Copeland said.

Camp Tecumseh has at least a one-to-six counselor to camper ratio (not including programming staff), Copeland said. He explained that the ratio is in place to make sure that children coming from difficult backgrounds have enough staff in place to help them adjust to the camp environment, which tends to differ from the urban home lives of most campers.

“It’s an adjustment to come from living in a very urban area to coming to Hunterdon County, New Jersey, which is very pastoral,” Copeland said. “And (for) a lot of them, it’s the first time they’ve ever seen a live chicken, which is a very freaky thing, it turns out, if you’re not used to that. They need space to be able to adjust, and to provide that kind of space, we have to have excellent supervision and plenty of coverage.”

Camp Tecumseh resides on 400 acres of land in Hunterdon County. Copeland described the surprise he felt when he first moved for the job and saw the area’s “absolutely beautiful” greenery, animals, lakes and farmland.

He hopes to provide a safe haven for kids to forge connections with one another, grow and eventually run the camp.

“The campers that are coming today are the ones that are going to be running this camp or running this program, five years from now. We want them to keep coming back, because we want them to fall in love with what’s happening here and then be able to provide what they received to the campers that come,” Copeland said.

“It’s very important to us that the campers see themselves in the leadership here. They see people that look like them that live where they live, that connect with them in ways that are unspoken and just natural.”

For village leader Paige Dlugose, the connection to Camp Tecumseh has spanned generations.

Her parents met at Camp Tecumseh, so she and her brothers were destined to go there too, Dlugose said.

At Camp Tecumseh, it is not rare for campers and staff to meet their future spouses, or even attend camp in hopes of finding a lifelong connection, a staff member said.

Starting as a camper in 2008, Dlugose worked her way up to a junior staff position at age 14, and is now a village leader for the younger girls at age 23, leading counselors and campers.

“Camp really runs through my veins. Throughout my whole journey at camp, I’ve met my absolute best friends and my family, as well as all of the children that have had a really big impact on my life,” Dlugose said. “The job is definitely very hard, but it is really worth the experience and getting to see children all over from New Jersey get to experience our program and learn about the Bible is really rewarding for us as well as them.”

Dlugose recently graduated from Penn State after studying education, and is now turning the passion she first experienced for working with children at camp into a full-time job.

For 19-year-old village leader Annaliese Fagan, her love for camp took her by surprise.

When she was 11, her mother told her she was going to go to Camp Tecumseh, and she did everything in her power to stay home.

“I tried to do things like hide applications, I tried to throw (them) in the garbage, and then they just would reappear again,” she said. “Eventually, I had to hop on the bus to go to Camp Tecumseh. I was on the bus, and I was still so upset that I had to go, and so we turned into the gates and I saw this big, beautiful campus.

“We pulled up in front of the tabernacle, and I walked out of the bus, and I kid you not, my life was changed in an instant. My life was changed because I felt the presence of God, and up until that point, I’d never felt the presence of God.”

Since her first summer at camp, Fagan met her lifelong best friend and made great memories with people she is still in contact with, she said.

When Copeland asked her to be head counselor after she applied to be a counselor for the second time this year, Fagan was overwhelmed by the offer.

She didn’t know she was being considered for the leadership position, and after praying and talking it through with her mother, she felt the new role made sense. The position requires her to rotate between different cabins and get to know different campers, and she has enjoyed experiencing campers of different ages, Fagan said.

One of her greatest takeaways from camp is that “even though it’s OK to be reluctant in trying new things, sometimes those new things will end up changing your life — and that’s exactly what I’ve experienced at camp and I get to see every single summer how another child and another child is experiencing just that.”

Copeland said, “We love camp, we believe in camp, it changes lives. I’ve seen it.

“Kids come who don’t have confidence and they get confidence. Kids come who don’t have friends and they leave with friends. Kids come and they don’t feel loved, and they leave feeling loved. It sounds, maybe, romanticized or sensational, but it is ultimately the difference in some kids’ lives between life and death.”

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Sarah Dolgin may be reached at sdolgin@njadvancemedia.com.

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